Call for tougher food safety rules

The European Union is contemplating tougher food hygiene rules, following the dioxin scare in Germany that led to around 4,700 of its farms being closed last week and investigations into food safety in several other member states. Around 490 German farms remained closed yesterday (12 January).

A spokesman for John Dalli, the European commissioner for health and consumer policy, said on Tuesday (11 January) that the EU’s 2001 food hygiene law could be “reinforced”.

Dioxins were found in eggs and poultry from German farms in concentrations up to four times greater than allowed under EU law. The contamination arose when fats intended for use in the paper industry were mixed with animal feed.

German authorities suspect criminal activity, but are still investigating the contamination, which they believe dates back to March 2010.

On Monday, Ilse Aigner, Germany’s agriculture minister, called for EU rules to ensure that fats for industrial uses and animal feed are produced in separate facilities.

This idea was backed by Joseph Daul, the leader of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), who said yesterday that there had to be EU-wide rules to ensure that the production of non-food- stuffs does not occur on the same site as food production. “You have to split the two, this is one thing we have learnt,” he said.

Aigner would also like to see EU authorities tighten safety further by establishing a list of substances that can be used in animal feed.

Asian bans

According to the European Commission, the contamination poses no risk to human health. It condemned as “disproportionate” a decision by South Korea to ban German egg and pork imports. Yesterday, China announced it would ban imports of German pork and eggs.

Dalli’s spokesman said that the Commission has been disappointed with the industry’s response to the scare, following a meeting between officials and industry executives on Monday (10 January).

The feed industry believes that better risk management would be achieved more quickly by re-writing guidance than by changing legislation. Alexander Döring, secretary-general of the European Compound Feed Manufacturers’ Federation, said: “It is not necessary to have new legislation. What we would hope for is that the Commission develops guidance for approval of such [fat blending] facilities.”

An EU official said that the authorities were still investigating how the contamination occurred. “It might be tempting to say that we need more legislation. Perhaps we need better monitoring. We are still in the process of finding out,” the official said.

Contaminated egg products found their way to France, the Netherlands and the UK. Although dioxin levels were found by the authorities to be well below the levels considered dangerous to human health, some UK supermarkets decided to withdraw quiches and cakes made with the contaminated eggs as a precautionary measure.

Richard Ashworth, a UK Conservative MEP and a member of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee, said that the scare highlighted the need for effective labelling and traceability systems. “The industry needs to take the lead on this, rather than having it forced upon them by EU legislation.”

Last month European ministers asked the Commission to draw up legislation to ensure that poultry, lamb and pork are labelled with their country-of-origin. Beef already has this requirement, following the BSE scare in the 1990s.

More than 90% of human exposure to dioxins, a group of compounds that cause cancer and reproductive problems, comes from food. Since the EU began setting limits for dioxins from 2002 – in response to an eggs and poultry scare in Belgium in 1999 – there have been four food scares in the EU.